Rules for bait fishing may change

Rich Eldred

Friday

Jan 30, 2009 at 12:01 AMJan 30, 2009 at 5:44 PM

Rules covering purse seining, surface gillnetting and cast net catching of menhaden, sea herring and mackerel, in inshore waters have been in effect for some time, but mostly scattered, applied and buried amid dense regulations covering other fisheries or drawn up for different conditions.

Good bait means a good catch and bait fishing rules in Massachusetts are up for an overhaul.

Fishermen from Cape Cod and all points south of Boston worried about new restrictions on surface gill nets, pondered a revival of purse seining and tossed comments into the salad at the public hearing held in Plymouth at the Radisson Tuesday night.

“We really need this. It has been a long time coming,” said Dan McKiernan, deputy director of the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. “This fishery hasn’t had any direct regulation. I hope after tonight and when we enact the rules, everybody will be on the same page.”

Rules covering purse seining, surface gillnetting and cast net catching of menhaden, sea herring and mackerel, in inshore waters have been in effect for some time, but mostly scattered, applied and buried amid dense regulations covering other fisheries or drawn up for different conditions.

The goal of the DMF is to clarify and unite the rules, as well as amending them to cope with the targeted fish and conditions.

Surface gillnetting rules

Surface gill nets are distinct from sink gill nets. The nets float in the upper two-thirds of the water and they have a head rope that floats.

In the past these permits have been customized out of the 300 or so inshore nets permits the DMF issues. The state wants to set special rules and gear specifications for a new “surface gill net permit.” The fishery will be limited entry with no transfers allowed.

The maximum net length would be 200 feet long and only one net could be fished at a time and fishing would be prohibited in navigable channels. Fishermen would have to remain within 100 feet of the net at all times.

Wellfleet’s Rick Merrill hasn’t done it for a while but nevertheless was unhappy with the suggested rules. He used multiple small nets and left them.

“We’d anchor the lines overnight and haul them the next day,” Merrill said. “We’d use 10 to 20 nets depending on how many fish were around – 125- to 150-foot each net. That’s how we did it historically. I don’t like for things to be taken away when we’ve done things for years.”

“This is going to totally put me out,” he added.

John Rice of Harwich was unhappy with the net size requirements.

“I don’t know where you buy a 200-foot net,” he said. “I buy mine in big bales that come 100 yards a bale from North Carolina. I’ve got 10 nets that are 300-feet long behind my house now. What do I do? Throw them away?”

Joel Boyce also objected to the size rules.

“I used to catch a lot. Catch a lot fast, go home and make money,” declared Joel Boyce. “No one is going to fish a 1,000-foot net in Wychmere Harbor. If you’re fishing Bass River and it’s shallow, no one wants to drag the net across the bottom. We use different nets for different things.”

Purse seining to ratchet up

The rules governing purse seining (originally designed for winter flounder) remain largely the same with the exception of grandfathering a 75-foot vessel under the maximum size limit of 72 feet and possibly restricting the days open top commercial purse seining.

The DMF wants to separate out purse seining permits from other inshore net permits that are generally used to catch bait for the striped bass and tuna fisheries. There are only 11 licensed purse seiners and just three are active. Permits could be transferred if they are actively fished in four or five years.

“No new permits are to be issued,” McKiernan said, but the eight inactive permits can be revived. “We are posed to allow the fishery to resume.”

The DMF is contemplating limiting the days of the week they can go out, which isn’t sufficient according to the Massachusetts Striped Bass Association.

“We’ve taken the position of being opposed to any purse seining in inshore areas,” said Patrick Paquette of the MSBA. “We do not believe we have enough data to say the actual numbers of menhaden are sustainable.”

Patrick also said that purse seining is incompatible with many other inshore uses such as kayaking. Large inshore areas covered by these rules include all of Buzzards Bay, Wellfleet and Provincetown harbors, Pleasant Bay and Nauset Marsh, Lewis Bay, Barnstable Harbor, Waquoit Bay and many other smaller coves and harbors on Cape Cod as well as estuaries up and down the coast.

Paquette noted menhaden have replaced river herring (the harvest of which is now banned) as the bait of choice for striped bass fishermen.

John Mahoney owns one of the 11 permits.

“The reason I’m not actively fishing is because the fish haven’t been there. Look at the history of menhaden. It runs on a 20-year cycle. This is the upswing. We probably have another 15 years,” he said. “You can harvest them or let them swim away to the ocean to die of old age. This is the way to supply tuna and lobstermen with bait.”

Mahoney said they go out at 4 a.m. and are done by 8 in the morning minimizing conflicts.

“The (MSBA) has always had a thorn in their side about this fishery,” he remarked.

“I don’t have any problem with these guys fishing seven days a week,” Rice commented. “There’s no lack of pogies.”

Cast netting rules liberalized

Cast nets, which are circular and small 10- to 14-feet in diameter, are tossed by hand and primarily used by recreational bass fishermen to catch bait (eels, juvenile sea herring). The proposed new rule would permit their use without permit. But the net catch can’t be sold without a commercial or bait dealer permit.

Cape Codder

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